


Taking the Time for a Number of Things (That Weren't Important Yesterday)

by Diminua



Series: I'll Try Not to Sing Out of Key [5]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, Although this bit doesn't really have any plot, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Still some internal monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 19:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6207505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Master has regenerated and is feeling frisky. In a good way, mostly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

‘You love it.’ The Master says, pressing closer. His hand creeps up into the Doctor’s impossible hair, tilting his head sideways, considering. The Doctor can feel the smugness now, the full-throttle speed of the Master’s mind, the fissures and the heat and the cynicism. 

Only the drums are duller. Not fainter, but buried, other elements heaped high to muffle them.

‘I had to bring everything else nearer the surface.’ The Master admits. ‘It might be a bit of a trainwreck for a while. Oops.’ That unnerving smile resurfaces. ‘Looks like I’m more honest as well. Speaking without thinking. I’ll definitely have to keep an eye on that.’ 

‘You can do that when you regenerate? On purpose? Reorder your mind?’ 

The Master's grin only broadens in the face of that bewilderment. 

‘Oh Doctor, you are lovely when you’re impressed with me. All eyes and little thinky frown lines.’ He smooths them down with his thumb to demonstrate.

‘There goes that mouth again.’ 

‘You can talk. You never stop. Perhaps I’ll just gag you.' He puts his hand lightly over the Doctor's mouth to illustrate, muttering. 'Hermit burble burble burble, friends burble burble, self-determination burble burble..’

Then he has to brace himself to take the extra weight as the Doctor collapses against him in a fit of exhausted laughter, clinging to the dark cotton of the Master’s waistcoat, rucking it up where it’s become much too loose. 

‘So what do we do now?’ He asks, catching his breath for a moment before the Master presses up meaningfully against him again. ‘Well, yes that.’ He concedes. ‘Clearly that, obviously that, but um, well.. besides that.’ He peers over the Master’s shoulder to where the scarred and burning planet had filled the sky. ‘What do we do about them?’

‘They must be somewhere.’ The Master says, indifferently. ‘And frankly, m'dear, I think they've caused us enough trouble. They can sort themselves out from here on in.’ He presses his forehead against the other Timelord’s, all the better to share a particularly salacious idea that has just come to him. Speaks his last three words on the subject very clearly and definitely. ‘Not. Our. Problem.’ 

That won’t do of course, they must be someone’s problem, and they’re certainly no-one else’s, but the Doctor lets himself be led for now. He’s just so very tired, still raw with anger and disappointment, and now that he finally has the Master’s undivided attention he can admit to himself that he missed it. 

‘Let me block it all out.’ The Master suggests, mouth so very close to the Doctor’s ear, pressing him down on something soft, breathing warm against his neck. ‘Let me..’ His fingers are just as quick, as nimble, as they always have been, making short work of buttons and the loose knot of his tie.

The Doctor goes quiet as he’s stripped to the waist, lashes closing over those enormous eyes, looking for all the world like something to be felled with a quick bite to the jugular. But it would be an elementary mistake to underestimate the Doctor, and always much, much more amusing to see others fall into that trap. 

The Master does bite though, pulls that ridiculous, pullable hair, demands kisses and gets and demands more. His fingers find the Doctor’s throat, but they tease more than anything else, providing just a hint of pressure against which the Doctor swallows, then into which he tries to push as the Master kisses him again. 

It’s still a puzzle, trying to disentangle the guilt from the want in the man. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. It would have been so easy to let rip, to punish him like he thinks he deserves, but that’s not.. No. The Master would never have let the bastard martyr himself. He’s too fond of it. Besides he wants to feel that pleasure, fluttery as the Doctor’s caught breath, building into something strong.

The season has finally turned, thick flakes of snow dropping from a pale-slate sky. Thin and naked, the Doctor shivers for the few seconds before the Master pins him again with his own clad body and kisses him. 

‘The last you would hardly give me a peck on the cheek.’ The Doctor says, muzzy with lack of air. ‘This one won’t stop.’

‘Perhaps I feel I didn’t put your mouth to good enough use last time round and want to make up for it.’ Or perhaps the slightly monkish habits he’d fallen into as Yana were harder to shake off than he’d have liked. He shies from that thought. No human, not even himself, should have such a profound effect on his psyche. 

Bad enough that the Doctor does, some part of his worldview lingering stubbornly in the Master’s subconscious, like a sweet and insidious melody. Or perhaps more like one of those tiresome women in Victorian novels who reform drunkards through the power of their own saintliness and would probably, in real life, end up badly beaten and sadly disillusioned.

He could evict him, of course. He could even destroy him. 

The thought makes something tighten unpleasantly in the Master’s chest, leaves him pressing apologetic kisses along the delicate chain of vertebrae in the Doctor’s bowed neck, hand cupping his skull to tilt it as he wants it. 

He’d like to have the Doctor laid out, helpless. Captive. 

‘You’re still angry.’ The Doctor murmurs. 

‘Not with you.’ He nips at the tempting softness of an ear before silencing him with another, more aggressive, kiss, pinning him down by his wrists and the slither of his own muscular thigh between the Doctor’s two. 

There’s friction there, pressed against one another, but his new-born strength and appetite wants more. Wants to hold the Doctor down and pound into him. Wants to feel these new muscles burn with effort, and the Doctor’s long, limber legs wrap around his hips, and not let either of them finish until he is damn well ready. 

He comes up from the kiss smirking again, sitting back. The Doctor tries to follow, but it’s an easy matter to take him by the shoulders and push him back down. 

‘Stay.’ 

This time he lies still, watching the Master shrug his ill-fitting clothes away with easy arrogance, walking the few steps to pick something off a low shelf with complete confidence in his naked body. No, more than confidence. Pride. 

The little jar he went to get is cold, but the oil warms and melts in his hands before he puts them on the Doctor, a light slick across the back of his wrists at first, adding some small measure of reality to the phantom sensation of fetters, binding him down to the bed. The Doctor’s own mind is complicit, flexing his fingers as if to try the range of movement and find its limits, but not enough to break the illusion.

He lets his legs be parted, knees prised willingly apart, the dark hair of thighs and groin sticking to his skin as oil-slippery hands manipulate and explore. He’s not quite erect, and the Master smirks and squeezes just hard enough to pull a moan from him before relaxing and coaxing him to firmness with long slow strokes of his half-closed fist. 

His eyes are on the Doctor’s face, the way he lets his head fall back, lips parting. Brilliant of course, they both are, but ultimately flesh and blood. Slaves to sensation, emotion, mess. The pressure of hands and mouth, the feel of slick skin and sound of quickening breath. 

He can feel the Doctor’s mind, glowing and responsive as his body. Warm and eager and affectionate, but it’s still not enough. 

He _will_ make the Doctor beg.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a focus to the movements of the Master’s hand, the turn of the wrist, just how firm he’s willing to be. It’s an end in itself, the Doctor’s frustration, and he lets his thoughts linger on that, on the fun of teasing and denying, knowing the Doctor can see it there, right at the forefront of his mind.

He can't help but notice the catch in the Doctor’s breath that means he likes the idea, the flexion of his fingers in the thick of the stolen furs - illegal trappers on an undeveloped world who will have to find another way home now, but that’s not the Master’s concern. He has the Doctor to occupy all his ruthless attention, watching for the sparks that light up that mind, preparing it for something the Master means to deny him.

There’s cruelty there. He would be the first – almost the first – to admit to it, that a part of him still likes the power that cruelty gives. The Doctor is a world, a universe in one man, and it’s intoxicating to have him like this, pliant and unresisting. That wayward and wandering brain made to shut up at last, just as that body is bucking in a wordless plea for more.

It makes him just a little more exposed and the Master shifts from one hand to the other, moving in a quicker rhythm, more slickly, and then pressing in with his dominant hand as well, careful but not too tender. The Doctor seems to have unlearnt all this, but he’s still eager, still wanting more.

He’s too close, almost there – and the Master stops, leaves him thrust into empty air, squirming on the fingers inside him. He bites – just a nip, a warning – at the Doctor’s nipple, his right hand digging itself a little deeper in the quiet, no sound but the frantic quickness of the Doctor’s breath.

He waits for him to calm, his chest rising and falling more slowly, before he resumes the attack, building the orgasm to refuse it again. 

This time the Doctor does beg. 

‘Please.’

‘Please _what,_ Doctor?’

‘Please Master, please let me come.’ He talks quickly, but he's not shy. Not holding out.

The Master runs his thumb along the swollen vein that brings the blood and makes the Doctor hard, pretending to think about it even though he already knows he won’t, and the Doctor’s throat sounds lush as he swallows in response, and his arse clenches on the Master’s two fingers.

He crooks them slightly as punishment, scraping the knuckle as he pumps them slowly in and out, just a little cruel again. If it can be called cruel when the Doctor clearly loves it, his mind on fire with sensation, lost to everything else.

‘Not yet.’ The Master decides, but he takes a few more leisurely strokes, accompanies them with a more vigorous thrust of his fingers. The Doctor whines, pushed and pulled between the two sensations.

‘Please.’ He’s ready, so ready to take more now, although his body isn’t quite where his readiness is, snug and stinging as the Master pulls his hips up and pushes himself in.

The pain is another taste of something feral. Something the Master will have to ration himself, since the Doctor appears incapable of doing it.

‘What happened to you Doctor?’ He breathes. Pulling him more tightly, pushing deeper, feeling the heady taint of pleasure with a touch of pain - not more, but not less – that spikes in the Doctor’s system.

He pulls the Doctors hands free of the fake tethers and presses them down with his own again, leaning low to breathe the same air, infect it with new words.

‘The man who sealed the Medusa Cascade single handed. What happened?’

‘You.’ The Doctor admits. ‘You happened.’ His eyes are dark and deep, focussed completely on the Master’s own as he rewards that honesty by finally starting to move.

This Doctor is lithe, limbs strung together seemingly with elastic, but he would have to bend himself in half to let the Master kiss him. He contents himself instead with holding that gaze until the Master looks away. Because it's raw and real and that makes it dangerous, and because the demands of his body, the nerves that clamour for attention, are dragging at his focus. He has to concentrate now, if he doesn't want to come at once.

The Doctor whines at the realisation that the Master is not allowing either of them to climax, all the more determined to impose control until the last possible moment because his body is screaming at him to finish. Merciless, torn between laughing and crying, but absolutely implacable until something finally snaps in a furious, joyous triumph.

It may be that even more than carnal sensation that trips the Doctor to follow him.

They collapse together, the Master heavy on top for a moment, before rolling off, weak and uncoordinated.

As soon as he catches his breath he chuckles, a rich, self-satisfied sound.

‘Oh Doctor.’ He yawns enormously as he settles, muscles warm and appetite sated. ‘It's good to be young and strong again.’


	3. Chapter 3

The Master is confused by the tender – almost sad – expression in the Doctor’s eyes, the trace of the Doctor’s fingers down his cheek as he pulls a blanket over them against the cold. 

‘If you were any less than you are you would be in pieces by now, the things that have been done to you.’ He says softly.

‘Lucky I’m not then.’ A quick, bright, self-satisfied smile, the narrowing of eyes that seem darker in the dim light of late afternoon. ‘Worrying about me again Doctor?’

‘You died.’ The Doctor says simply.

‘Do you want to know what it’s like?’

‘No.’ 

‘Bloody annoying.’ The Master says, ignoring him. ‘I did think about trying to hang on you know. Maybe coming back and seeing if I could hijack a physical form. Probably the Castellan’s since he never seemed to be doing anything very interesting with his. There are rituals, you know, courtesy of our ancestors.’ 

‘You read the black scrolls?’

‘Not the originals, but naturally there were copies made. There's nothing so well preserved as forbidden knowledge. It was really quite fascinating.’

‘What changed your mind?’ 

‘I don't know. I could feel myself unravelling, and somehow..’ He tries to think of the right words, but perhaps there is no real way of saying what he had felt, without a body to feel or a mind to contemplate. He mistrusts all his impressions of that time. ‘I knew I wasn’t going to come together again. Not in the same way.’ He fixes his gaze on the bulging underside of the canvas where the snow is weighing it down, avoiding the Doctor’s eyes. ‘And there is something very seductive about that Doctor, after so many centuries of life. To let yourself just dissipate, out into the cosmos..’ He pulls a face, coming back to the present. ‘Although I was a bit annoyed that I’d never be able to get my revenge on the Daleks.’

‘And then the next thing you knew you were being resurrected to help fight a war.’ 

'Against that very Empire.' That disturbing grin flares again before the Master nods. ‘No rest for the wicked.’ He says.

 

The Doctor let the Master slide through the door first, glancing briefly after the retreating guard before he followed. 

‘I’m sure I could have talked him round you know.’ He said.

‘Hypnosis is quicker and in the long run kinder.’ The Master told him. ‘He’s less likely to be court-martialled and shot this way.’ He had already closed off the power relay, and now he flipped the front of the navigation computer open, eyes darting and following the wires around the fractured internal structure to see where they had charred and broken. ‘Whereas if he gets all fired up with your particular brand of highly vocal mutiny they’ll be organising a firing squad just to shut him up.’

‘Well.’ The Doctor didn’t know whether to be more offended or surprised by this outpouring of acid humour. ‘I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.’ 

For a short while they worked in silence, the Master still looking for physical damage and the Doctor using a small device to check resistance across the connections. Pausing only to hold one of the circuit boards steady as the Master threaded an end of wire back into place and twisted it round on itself to keep it there, trying to bypass the worst of the damage without rendering the unit useless.

‘Not everyone executes their footsoldiers you know.’ The Doctor said at last.

‘Of course not. Some simply send them off to be massacred by the enemy instead.’ The Master responded idly, eyes and mind still focussed on the task in front of him. 

‘What a very bleak picture of the universe you have.’ 

‘Do I?’ Concentration broken by the sadness in the Doctor’s voice, the Master finally looked up, eyes unguarded with surprise for a moment before he bent to his work again and tried to dismiss the subject. ‘Well at least I won’t be disappointed.’ 

‘Unlike me I suppose?’

‘There is no use in caring about species with the lifespan of butterflies and the destructive potential of a neutron explosion.’ 

‘I don’t agree.’ 

‘Really? Then look around you. Even when you’re trying desperately to help you only end up being forced to take sides.’ The Master sounded almost bitter as he added. ‘Everything in this world is so very breakable.’

‘Yes.’ The Doctor admitted. ‘I can’t argue with that. I’ve felt the same lately.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But it doesn’t change anything, and from the point of view of a butterfly a day may seem an eternity. Who knows?’ 

‘I rather doubt a butterfly has sufficient awareness of time passing for it to be relevant.’

‘It was your analogy.’ The Doctor said patiently.

‘So it was.’ He stepped back from his rewiring as he spoke, clearly finished, just a slight grimace twisting his mouth as the Doctor moved closer to inspect his handiwork. ‘Don’t you trust me Doctor?’

‘You do keep telling me not to.’ But he only cast a cursory eye over the circuitry, enough to spot deliberate sabotage, and returned at once to an earlier point. ‘Why are you helping me now then, if you really think it’s all just..’ The Doctor hesitated over the word. ‘Pointless.’

‘Obviously I have an ulterior motive.’ 

‘Which is?’

‘Your _continued goodwill_.’ The Master said, ladling dryness over the last two words like champagne. 

‘I see.’

‘Yes Doctor, I suspect you do.’ 

The first kiss was surprisingly gentle. Restrained, exploratory, like the cautious flirtation of minds. Not, in fact, what either of them expected of the other, and they paused a little longer than necessary to take breath afterwards, lips bare inches apart, trying to consolidate what they’d learned before moving together again to be, this time, a little less gentle.

A little more certain.


	4. Chapter 4

The Doctor knows he should be more disturbed by the Master's plans to resurrect himself than the fact he ultimately didn't, but he can’t, still can’t, won’t, get past the fact the Master died at all. Died alone, died and left him. To know he could have fought to stay and chose not to hurts. And that is wrong, wrong, wrong, because it was the right decision, and it shouldn’t feel like a betrayal, somehow, for the Master to have made the right choice. 

They should be sleeping, between the Doctor’s battered state and the Master’s regeneration, but the Doctor’s thoughts spin endlessly on and the Master seems more awake than ever, vibrating with life. Reborn.

‘We could be gods you know.’ He says after a bit, apparently in answer to the Doctor’s confused whirl of thought. ‘You and I.’

‘We’d make terrible gods.’ The Doctor answers him without opening his eyes, brow just slightly furrowed with concern at the direction the Master’s mind is moving. 

‘We couldn’t possibly be worse than the one we’ve got.’ 

‘Rassilon isn’t a god. Being immortal doesn’t make a person a god.’ 

‘Sounds like a damn good start to me.’ The Master says. It seems he swears this time round. It’s disorientating. He props himself up on his elbow. ‘You’re exhausted aren’t you?’

‘Can’t stop thinking.’ 

‘Here.’ The press of fingers against his neck, feeling for the steady double beat of his pulse, the Master’s mind pressing down like a blanket, smothering and soothing and narcotic. The Doctor feels his limbs and eyelids grow heavy, a sensation of slowly falling forwards. 

_You know_ , the Master thinks, unguarded as the tension eases from the Doctor’s face and his lips part softly on a sigh, almost as though he were blowing a very discreet kiss. _I like you like this. I’d like to.._

Uneasy, shifting restlessly in his half-sleep, the Doctor tries to pull himself back to the surface. 

_Oops._ The Master thinks, pushing reassurance and more than a splash of humour into that one carefully formed word. _Ssh, no. It’s alright, I promise. I didn’t mean this time. We’ll talk._

It works, the Doctor stops struggling, lets himself drop all the way down this time, down the rabbit hole into a heap of the softest feathers, small as snowflakes but warm, so warm closing over and around him, heavy and soft and perfect.

And then the Doctor is asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

There was always a slight shock on entering the Doctor’s Tardis. At the stark cleanliness of the console room, the unorthodox resetting of some of the controls, the brightness of the lighting, the wheeze of this old museum piece as they take off. 

It suited the Doctor though, fair and fresh as a daisy, his annoyingly biddable hair smoothed back in place despite the Master’s best efforts to dishevel it. Busying himself adjusting settings and checking dials as he hesitated, wondering what to do next. 

‘You’re dithering Doctor.’ 

‘I wouldn’t call it dithering.’ 

‘Come here.’ Frustrated, the Master backed up the order with a slight.. something. Not a real attempt at compulsion, but close enough to make the Doctor resist on principle and cast a quick, angry glance over the top of the console at him. 

‘Please don’t do that.’ 

‘Apologies. Forgive my impatience.’ 

‘I suppose we have been dancing around one another rather a long time.’

‘Too long, frankly.’ Which was at least as much the Master’s fault as the Doctor's, but of course he had chosen to disregard that. Just as he was refusing to move forward first, only arching an eyebrow and waiting, determined that the Doctor should be the one to close the gap. 

There was something there about the Master’s need to be in control, or at least to pretend to himself he had control, that the Doctor deferred thinking about for the moment. Focussed instead on the welcoming curve of the Master’s mouth, the something bright and challenging in his eyes as the Doctor bent to kiss him again. 

This time it was more invasive, a tighter press of bodies, a tangle of tongues and minds and the Master’s bare hands clutching into the fabric of the Doctor’s jacket. Just a hint of teeth too, against the vulnerable column of the Doctor’s throat, and then his mouth again, pulling the Doctor into him, off balance, taking his weight with pleasure, the Doctor’s hands spread across the velvet of the Master’s jacket to brace himself where moments before they had been grappling with the first in a long line of plush and fiddly buttons. 

Skin was hard to find, even after the Doctor had straightened up, warm with arousal, to shrug off the jacket and pull his jumper over his head. The lightly starched cotton of his shirt creasing but not coming untucked, his light, straight hair falling irritatingly back into place again. 

The Master barely knew how strongly he was projecting frustration until he felt it echoed back by the Doctor’s own, both his hands caught as the Doctor pulled him along, absurdly, wonderfully, eager. 

He had a confused, distracted impression of a small pale room with empty shelves and fresh white linen on the bed, the lingering sensation of temporal static as time resumed in a suspended space, the Doctor’s fizzing, buoyant, resolute but by no means confident mind. And then they were kissing again, sliding the Doctor’s braces down his shoulders more or less between them. 

‘Let me take this off.’ Nodding, lips reddened with kisses and hair finally (and rather appealingly) tousled, the Doctor leant back against the door and watched as the Master freed himself from his high collared jacket and neat black boots, his own hands making short work of his own shirt buttons, but his eyes occupied in roaming across a surprisingly broad chest. 

There’s a shared memory there, a rooftop classroom and a professor – no doubt they could remember the name if they bothered to try – proclaiming that as Timelords they were fortunate to be free of certain biological imperatives. At that time neither had disputed it, despite the Doctor's private conviction that it was hopelessly wrong.

‘Prove it.’ The Master demanded, pressing him up against the door as he spoke, chin tilted in challenge. The touch of all that skin a slice of warmth and his mouth hotter and wetter against the Doctor’s own, and it was all the Doctor could do to wonder if they ought really to be able to share thought so readily, so soon. But of course it wasn’t soon, not really, they’d known each other for centuries. 

The linen sheets were smooth and cool, nothing like the slight cling of skin on skin, fingertips and thighs and mouths, moving together, closer, writhing like animals, all breathy, breathless noises and not quite enough friction until the Master insinuated a hand between their bodies and adjusted things so there was more, and better. 

The space that left allowed them both to watch, the Master’s wetted hand not quite large enough to wrap around both their cocks and the fat wet thrust and push and pull through his fingers perfectly, wonderfully obscene, reinforcing each sweet, heady throb of sensation until vision was blurred and blotted out in the sharp heat of climax. 

The Doctor hid his face against the Master’s shoulder as he came, biting his lip to keep himself quiet, curiously inhibited. But there would, there must, be other opportunities, and the Master was too close upon his own climax to analyse it overmuch, spattering deliberately across the Doctor’s thighs and running his fingers lazily through the mess and then up to stroke at the Doctor’s hair, making some point he didn’t fully understand himself. 

Perhaps the Doctor understood better, raising his head to lick delicately at the Master’s sticky fingers, blushing but determined, eyes modestly downcast even as he finished and lay back on his own pillow with a small, contented sigh. 

The Master stared wonderingly at him for a moment and then lay quietly down himself. He supposed he ought, by now, to be used to the Doctor surprising him.


	6. Chapter 6

If he closed his eyes he could feel the galaxy itself, spiralling out from the two of them on these absurd and anachronistic sheets; all the complexity and organized chaos of it. The firefly pinpricks of sentient minds and sharp, metallic taint of background radiation. A thousand almost imperceptible gravities distorting time and matter out of the smooth, sleek curve. 

Closer to hand, the Doctor’s mind murmured very faintly beside him, almost soothing, like the dulled hum of a powerful but distant engine, occasionally throwing off sparks that he hadn’t learnt to read yet, and perhaps never would. 

When they touched the pattern grew clearer, and when they kissed it blurred.

They blurred, smudging into one another at the edges, so that he could feel the loop of his own fingers around the Doctor’s wrist, subtly confining, until the sensation became disagreeable, and he drew his mind in again. 

He _hated_ being trapped. 

 

The Doctor drops into REM sleep almost at once, clearly shattered, his skin slightly cool to the touch as he heals. His dreams make no sense from the outside, with only the light caress of the Master’s thumb across his forehead, smoothing the lines that shouldn’t be there until his brow clears and the very faintest suggestion of a smile touches his lips. 

Better. The Master leaves him now, slipping from the couch and pulling on trousers and shoes before he walks out into the snowswept square, flakes falling on his bare skin like tiny, icy, kisses. He enjoys the feel of his own biceps under his hands, the sinew in his forearms. Even in this faint light he can see the rivers of veins under the skin. Swollen with blood, with life. 

He doesn’t have a Tardis key of his own but he lifted the Doctor’s quite easily back when he was propping him up, and he enters the console room boldly, bathed in that soft golden light the Doctor favours these days. 

The impulse to steal her and leave the Doctor stranded is no more than the last dying ember of an ancient (and epic) antagonism. Besides he still has plans for the Doctor when he’s got his strength back.

‘Wardrobe I think.’ He says instead, shuffling inelegantly in trousers and shoes both too loose for him. 

Neither wardrobe nor bathroom have moved since the last time he was here, although the former has become even more cluttered. Mostly, unsurprisingly, with clothes that are too long (unless he wants to compensate by wearing those frankly dodgy platforms the doctor has squirreled away in a hatbox under the bureau), too tight and too colourful. 

There is a dark grey top he’s borrowed before though, which if not as luxurious as velvet, is rather easier to move in. Some black cords that are also pleasant to touch. He strokes his hand down his thigh, feeling the fabric and the muscle beneath it. 

Finally he looks in a mirror, ruffles at his hair, ruffles it back again. He’ll do.


	7. Chapter 7

The Doctor is still sleeping. Curled on his side in the absence of a partner, fingers gripping again at the blanket, lips slightly parted. 

_Feelings._ Oh how he resents being made to feel. That he can have the universe or he can have the Doctor, and for today, each day at a time, it’s always the Doctor he can’t sacrifice. 

The Doctor’s neck, bowed like this, makes him think of some kind of gazelle. He coils his fingers loosely in the hair that stands at the nape of his neck as though to pull it, imagining the shock and surge of triumph it would once have given him, but now only loosens his fist again with a wry chuckle. 

_Feelings._ He thinks again. How revolting. Although not as revolting as worrying about those ridiculous little humans. 

Of course he had always known the Doctor would break his heart on the creatures, but he.. He had never had any trouble remaining aloof. Perhaps it was the ghost of Yana, still lodged like a bacterium somewhere in his system, uncomfortable at the thought of all those lost souls – ludicrous phrase - trapped in a rocket ship bound for nowhere. Hope finally blinking out just as surely as the galaxies had. And then of course their lives would follow, one by one. 

There was nothing to be done for the animal parts of the creatures – to loop them back in time, breeding and fighting and feeding, would only add to the eventual problem. More mouths, more bodies. More stink and chaos in the end of days.

But the minds. What else was a functioning mind but a series of electrical impulses? Information to be uploaded, downloaded, stored or allowed to live out it’s days – perhaps even a little longer – in an unreal realm, a creation of the Master’s fertile imagination.

There is ego in the idea too, and no shame or pretence in the fact. 

If he can manipulate matter as he had done here in this very square, if he can bend others to his will and throw his thoughts across the cold emptiness of space and time, where even light and sound are swallowed and compressed to nothing, how much more might he be capable of where matter consisted not of atoms but the more malleable stuff of information? 

In a way it would be his own, far larger, kingdom, the one he had always been thwarted of before. 

At this last thought the Master begins to laugh, standing in his former citadel in his borrowed clothes; remembering his dreams of domination, his attempts to kill and subdue, and realising that this is now the kingdom he plans to create. That he can still be a god, all powerful, and it barely matters that they won’t even know.

If nothing else it should give entropy a kick up the backbone. 

He laughs aloud again and spins, half drunk on his own cleverness, and the stars spin with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the Beatles' Track 'Fixing a Hole'


End file.
